11.20.2006

Fallout Shelter Handbook 1962

I found this musty handbook from 1962 in a pile of similarly musty magazines and articles in a booth at the Inman Park Arts Festival several years back. The illustrated cover was what initially caught my eye but then I glanced at the large bold lettering at the top and I immediately put it in my "to buy" pile. The cover is classic: your average white American family enjoying life as best as they can after an atomic attack. What I love the most about it is that Mom is in her day dress, apron and all, preparing dinner, and Dad is relaxing in his jacket, smoking a pipe, having just finished reading the liner notes to something by the Ray Coniff Singers, probably. I didn't even take a gander at what was inside until later at home. Most of what you'll find in the handbook is pretty standard construction "how-to's" -- it could've been sold at a Home Depot if they had them back then. In the table of contents you'll find chapter headings with titles like: "How You Can Survive a Nuclear War", "Build a Shelter Now", "Stock Up Now", "Have a Plan of Action Now", "While You Are in Shelter", "Evacuation", etc. This one was interesting: "Guerrilla Warfare", with the tagline, "It'll be done by the people who survive with equipment that survives." The chapter is filled with then-impressive photos of military weapons and vehicles: jets, tanks, missiles, and the like.
Not the best photography, but there are some quaint images that I scanned and would like to share with you. Check it out (click on images to view their Flickr pages, then click "All Sizes."):

The article follows the Perkins family, who decided to do a test living in a shelter for seven days. Great revelations include: "Mrs. Perkins missed her kitchen and trips to the beauty parlor," (this was during day four); "By the fifth day, the Perkins family began to realize the seriousness of our times and the value of a shelter..."; and lastly: "...the Perkins family didn't enjoy their stay in a shelter, but, on the other hand, they found that it could be done with a minimum of discomfort and danger."

I just love that bershon pose the daughter is giving there. She doesn't look happy.

When in doubt: give a kid a book on surviving a nuclear attack to pull the heart strings of each and every reader.

This just struck me as funny. I dunno why. She's checking for radiation levels, in case you're wondering.

Ladies and gentlemen: The Loneliest Man in the World. Me thinks this was wishful thinking on his part for installing three beds, don't you agree?
Not many illustrations in this handbook, save for the cover and this one, with some nice post-nuclear winter fallout trees in the background there.
There are a few advertisements in the Fallout Shelter Handbook, most of which are dull and mundane. But there were a few that caught my eye:

I always use my children for slave labor, don't you? "Pick up the pace, Junior, Sally's looking a little peaked."

Everybody poops. Even during fallout. If I had my choice, I'd much rather go with this toilet than the following one. But then again, I'm not too sure about chemicals agitating my stink in such close-knit quarters.
Nothing like ending a post with an image of a toilet. Enjoy!
You can see all images from the Fallout Shelter Handbook in this Flickr set.
For all things atomic, be sure to check out Conelrad.com. Some great articles and short films on Civil Defense during the Cold War years.

41 comments:

My husbands grandfather built a fall-out shelter in his house purchased in 1967. When we'd visit him we'd stay in the guest room right off the shelter. Pretty wierd. Joel's aunts and uncles have great stories about playing in the shelter. Me, I never ventured in.

Funny now I suppose. I was in third grade in 62 and we had atomic bomb drills on a regular basis. Stay away from the windows, get under your desk etc. I remember one math exercise where the teacher would pin point a location and have us calculate the various components of a blast radius for a given mega tonnage albeit ground burst or air.

These lessons were carried over into the afternoon science class on topics of meteorology, the prevailing seasonal winds and likely directions of drift of a radioactive cloud. Given our geographic location, we felt reasonably safe, leastwise more so than any school age child that might be found in Chicago, New York, Los Angeles or in any proximity of a major military installation as Russian ICBM's on the polar route MIRV'd over western Canada.

I suppose bomb shelters like school desks gave room for hope that such was survivable though most people wouldn't have. It was more important that people have hope and many profitable cottage industries rose up to support the premise.

While the eminent threat of nuclear exchange is greatly diminished today, the potential for social collapse among modern societies is much greater, the resulting carnage almost beyond comprehension with any advanced preparation no less than equally absurd.

Hey, Man. I like your blog. I saw this post on BoingBoing, and the phrase 'Inman Park' caught my eye. I live in the ATL, too, and know someone you may know from work, John Kay? Small world, small town. In the mid-90's, I went to a yard sale that Agnes Scott was having, and bought a 25lb canister of 'Carbohydrate Candy' and a wicked looking can opener that they had stored up with a bunch of other junk 'just in case'. Funny how long it takes us to purge out that stuff.

People make fun of ""Duck and Cover", fallout shelters, and hiding under the desk; But there are many situations where these simple precautions could save lives. Not everyone is going to be mail blast radius, and staying underground a few days til the worst of the fallout decays would really work for a lot of people. Civil Defense fell by the wayside in the early 70s, but Carter revived it. FEMA was created as a system to deal with nuke attack. Its backers used hurricane and earthquake response as a cover. If the original FEMA program hadn't been gutted in the 80s, we could have cleared out much of NOLA in a couple of days. Much of Houston tried to evacuate for Rita ant there was nothing but meyham on the freeways. The original FEMA plan would have had us all out in two days.

Not to rain on most of you guys parade but while civil defense is gone, the nukes are not. Hello? A terrorist nuke is very possible in which case Duck and Cover could save your life. Watch it on Google video. Go to www.physiciansforcivildefense to learn more. I was trained in the US navy to launch nukes from submarines. I know whereoff I speak. Great handbook. A collectors item!

What killed off the home bomb shelter was the dawning realization of just how long you'd have to stay inside one. It's not like "Jericho" on TV, where a good rainstorm washes it all away, and everything outdoors is normal again. If you were somewhere that you needed to be in a fallout shelter, you'd need to be in it for years. Not days, not weeks, but years.

The chance of agriculture surviving both the initial radiation and years of neglect in any meaningful way is pretty slim as well.

On a globe, everybody's downwind of everybody else. Nobody wins in nuclear war.

Oh, but the good news is that most camping stores still sell the Porto-Biff, if not by that name.

Since all the best evidence starts with "I once saw on TV", I have a vignette to share.

I once saw this show on TV where survivors of hiroshima were interviewed. One guy said that at the time of the blast he was at a swimming pool and jumped in. When he surfaced many people had very very serious burns. He didn't.

I've studied this stuff on and off for several years as a hobby, and as I remember the swimming pool trick might actually work. Of course, the radiation levels would still have been astronomical when he surfaced.

I can't believe how silly and uninformed people were back then... imagine... having to spend TWO WEEKS to a MONTH down there... everyone knows it's safe after 3-5 days... gosh they were animals back then...

I had a friend who's Dad was quite paranoid and installed a secret bombshelter/underground food storage at night so no would know about it. Of course my friend told me and everyone else so it ended up being not-so-secret. That was like 10 years ago. I don't know if they had a Port-o-Biff though.

I grew up in Atlanta in the 60's and my industreous uncle built a bomb shelter in the parking lot of Cambellton Plaza shopping center, west of the city. I don't know that he ever sold one, but it was fun to visit. My grandmother stocked mason jars full of water "just in case". Ah, the innocence.

We are studying the Cold War in social studies and this kind of helps me out. I mean i have to do a project on this and everything that i have learned about the atomic bomc threats and everything it would be really scary!lol

I am amazed! I did a senior these for my bachelor's on the Atomic Age, & would have given anything to have had a copy of this booklet. I have several others from 1961, but they are not as nice as this one. One of the best ones is "You CAN Survive Atomic Attack" by W. Libby (invented the term "fallout" & discovered the atomic clock).

I'm interested in using the first bomb shelter image in a book of U.S. women's history (entitled Women Making America) that I am publishing this year. Is there a chance that I can get a higher res image from you? I would really love it. Thanks!Juliepolka . dot @ verizon . net

Cool manual. I recall seeing something like it when I was a kid. My daddy prepared for the A-Bombing of Atlanta during the Cuban deal. Bricks in the basement windows, stocks of canned food, flashlights, blankets, a monopoly set and etc.

I find it humorous that so many today believe a nuclear exchange equates to doomsday. Of course the science strongly suggests otherwise.

So laugh not. Duck and cover plus the information in this kind of manual could save you just as it was designed to do 45 years ago.

I remind you your alternative is to rely on FEMA. If that's your strategy, then oh well.

Those interested in the history of the fallout shelter, the cold-war mentality and the ethical debates that fallout shelters provoked, and the expressions of this debate in newspapers, magazines and television (including the famous Twilight Zone episode "The Shelter") should check out the book, "One Nation Underground: The Fallout Shelter in American Culture" by Kenneth D. Rose. It's very readable and entertaining.

I find it humorous that 'Taint Right' seems to believe he could survive a nuclear exchange. Ha! Pop your head out of your shelter two weeks after an 'exchange' of ICBMs and there won't be much out there any more. No trucks to bring you your Oscar Meyer lunchmeat, no trucks to bring you your cans of Hormel chili...

The ridiculous belief that via some 'Mad Max' type outcome, we'd continue as a life-as-we-can-imagine it - is beyond stupid.

We'd all die within 3 months.

After pounding the dirt in our backyards with a claw hammer wishing we could find a few more worms - we'd be done.

War is not healthy for the continuation of our species.

Oh. By the way, over 1 billion people use a bag-in-can as a toilet everyday - when it gets full, they take that bag to the edge of town (slum) and toss it. The paradigm of the 'flying toilet'

Yet those of us who are accidentally saved from such a life, try not to think about that and slide between our comfy sheets, safe in the knowledge that if 'they' come for us, we have shotguns, pistols and semi-automatics to protect us.

If the button is pushed, you may wish to join the 'Grateful Dead' (that's where that comes from...)

Hey, I emailed Ward about the nations first bomb shelter or fallout shelter. Turns out the owner was an aniimator, illustrator, etc.Place, Pleasant Hills, Pa.A page of the flyer....http://www.pitt.edu/~szekeres/bomb-shelter.jpg

I remember having nightmares as a kid during the Cuban missle crisis. My dad comforted me by explaining the idea of mutually assured destruction.Today, as an adult living 15 blocks from the White House, my plans for a nuclear event amount to keeping a bottle of Veuve Cliquot chilled for toasting the trails of the incoming missles, although it's kind of a shame I won't have time to finish the bottle.